I’ve commented before that Mike Huckabee seems like an nice, entertaining guy. I’ve enjoyed his appearances on Colbert Report and hearing him interviews, and he’d be high on my list (as previously noted) to invite over for a beer.
BD rightly points out that Dubya got elected on just that sort of personal bonhomie (which, I’ve read, is much stronger one-on-one or in small groups, and is a “secret” to his success).
And in keeping with that, an examination of some of the folks Huckabee hangs out with, who may also be fun to tip a brew back with, but who have some pretty scary reconstructionist and domininist religio-political ideas.
Ideas like the ones some of Huckabee’s supporters hold stem from two radical doctrines, reconstructionism and dominionism. As Conason writes, these ideas come down to “the notion that America, indeed every nation on earth, is meant to be governed by biblical law.” Additionally, they stem from a belief that the United States was founded as a Christian nation, then betrayed by secular humanist liberals who created a myth of separation of church and state in the 20th century, leading the country to immorality and godlessness, and that the United States must be taken back by Christians. Some of the proponents of this idea are unashamed about using the word “theocracy” to describe their goal. The most radical among them — including two of the movement’s leading lights and progenitors, R.J. Rushdoony and his son-in-law Gary North — advocate a return to the practice of stoning as a method of execution, and expanding this death sentence to the crimes of homosexuality, blasphemy and cursing one’s parents.
One of the early organizations to promote reconstructionist ideas was the Coalition on Revival. Rushdoony and North were members of its steering committee. In 1986, two years after its founding, the group produced “A Manifesto for the Christian Church,” which says, among other things, “[The] Bible is the only absolute, objective, final test for all truth claims … The Bible is not only God’s statements to us regarding religion, salvation, eternity, and righteousness, but also the final measurement and depository of certain fundamental facts of reality and basic principles that God wants all mankind to know in the spheres of law, government, economics, business, education, arts and communication, medicine, psychology, and science.” The group also released 17 tracts laying out its prescription for what the “Christian Worldview” should be on topics from government to law, medicine, family and economics. The introduction to these states, “We believe America can be turned around and once again function as a Christian nation as it did in its earlier years. We believe that wherever the pastors of any city in the world join together in unity to make Christ Lord of every sphere of life, and, with Spirit-led strategy, mobilize their people into a unified spiritual army; that city can and will become ‘a city set upon a hill.'”
I worry a scosh about judging a person too much by some of the folks who support or hang out with him (cf. all the conservative blogosphere’s current outrage over some Obama supporters wearing Che Guevara shirts), but it’s something to examine critically (does this reflect the person’s thinking? is this person likely to call on these people for advice, support, or even to serve in office?). Most candidates are only one or two degrees of separation from some real nuts. Heck, most of us probably are.
Still — remember this when McCain picks Huckabee for VP — or, at the very least, actively courts his support once the nomination is sewn up.
Birds of a feather…
Yes, and “lay down with dogs, get up with fleas.”
That said, I can also accept, politically, that person X may end up wth person Y standing next to them because Y prefers X to Z, even if X doesn’t actually accept all the things that Y says. E.g., I would not want to necessarily be evaluated, politically, by what BD espouses, even though he comments here, I comment at his site, and I consider him a friend, etc. And, doubtless, vice-versa.
That said, were I a *politician* (vs. merely a polite blogger), I would need to deal with differentiating (or not differentiating) my opinion from those around me, those who support me, those with whom I associate. (Which, to my mind, is an excellent reason not to become a politician.)
🙂
That said, and for what it’s worth, I’m probably a lot closer to BD’s positions than Huckabee’s. 🙂